


Lead Me to the Light

by Howlingdawn



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Canon-Typical Violence, Family Bonding, Family Feels, Family Issues, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Movie: Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Movie: Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Movie: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Redemption, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:14:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22164685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Howlingdawn/pseuds/Howlingdawn
Summary: Ben Solo was the boy who watched the darkness within him tear his family apart. Kylo Ren is the monster he became when one wrong move too many brought the darkness surging to the surface. But is Kylo truly the monster he appears to be, or can Ben still be saved?
Relationships: Armitage Hux & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Ben Solo | Kylo Ren & Han Solo, Finn & Ben Solo, Leia Organa & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Leia Organa/Han Solo, Luke Skywalker & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Poe Dameron & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey & Han Solo
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	Lead Me to the Light

**Author's Note:**

> Right. So. I've been in this fandom for, like, eight days, and I've been planning this AU for at least six of them. I never expected to care about Star Wars, but TFA sucked me in with the galaxy's cutest droid and Han adopting a pair of space orphans. Honestly the one thing I didn't like was how they handled Ben/Kylo. I /wish/ I could love him - and as a Loki, Lotor, and Zuko stan, he is 100% my type so I /should/ be able to love him - but imo canon failed to follow through on Ben's potential, so here I am, rewriting parts of three movies to give him the story I wish he could have had.
> 
> This is marked as canon divergence, which is very true, but I'm also dancing with canon, so there will be decent timeskips within chapters (this one, for example, will span all of TFA) because there are plenty of movie scenes that still happen but aren't significant enough to include. I'm pretty much jumping to significant character moments, otherwise this would be overwhelming and I'd never get it done.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

FN-2187 marched into battle with his usual loyalty, his blaster ready and orders heeded. He plunged into the desert night lit only by the flames of destruction, immune to the screams and chaos as per usual, ready to serve the First Order without question as he always did, eager to prove himself in front of the one and only Kylo Ren.

Until his comrade died dragging a bloody hand across his helmet, making him freeze, giving him a moment to think. A moment to feel.

The screams crashed over him, breaking through the cracks of fear left by his dying fellow Stormtrooper, widening them, deepening them, until FN-2187 could hardly breathe. He looked around, gaze flying every which way, breaths coming in harsh gasps as he watched people running, screaming, begging. Adults and teenagers threw themselves in front of children, the children then barely having enough time to clutch at their clothes and sob before being killed themselves or herded away.

_We’re killing innocents._

He had killed rebels in his previous five battles, but only ones who were actively shooting at him. It had been self-defense, both of himself and the First Order. But this… These people were innocents. They were just trying to live their lives. They were protecting their families. They were _children_.

_Oh god. What have I done?_

FN-2187 shook himself, a futile attempt to rid himself of this new awareness. His job was not to question orders, it was to follow them. He got back to his feet, hurrying to fall back into line guarding the surviving civilians.

Only to be ordered to shoot them all, Captain Phasma’s voice unfeeling and final.

He tightened his finger on the trigger, staring down the nearest civilian. She was dressed in rags, her hair falling in limp, greasy strands, her skin clinging to her bones. The young girl she tucked behind her was cleaner, healthier, and terrified. The woman jutted her chin out defiantly even as she shook with fear, clutching the little girl with what looked like all her strength.

For a moment, he flashed back to the dreams he still sometimes had, dreams of a mother who would tuck him in, tell him a bedtime story, kiss him goodnight, and be there to hug him when he woke up in the morning hungry for a homecooked breakfast made with love instead of a strictly nutritional portion dumped on his tray.

He lowered his blaster.

For a split second, the woman softened, confused but relieved, the child behind her almost daring to crack a thankful smile.

A barrage of shots killed them both, leaving them slumped over each other, covered in blood and looking at him with lifeless eyes.

_No!_

Sensing someone watching him, he turned around and found himself staring straight at Kylo Ren. His heart in his throat, nausea and confusion and horror threatening to strangle him, he tried to hold his blaster as if he had been shooting and turned to follow the others back to the ship, waiting for an order from Ren to stop, an order that, for some reason, never came. Spotting the Resistance fighter ahead of him, alone and defenseless and just as defiant as the woman, FN-2187 started to wonder. It wouldn’t make up for all those he had killed, but… it would be a start.

This time, instead of obeying orders to kill, he would decide to _save_ a life.

\-----

Kylo watched the Stormtrooper from the shadows. He knew he should do something, order him to fire, call him out so his failure was known, or even just shoot him and be done with it. He wasn’t following Phasma’s orders to kill the villagers. He wasn’t following Snoke’s orders to leave no witnesses. He deserved to be punished. He deserved to be made into an example.

But Kylo couldn’t do it.

He looked at the dying civilians, remembering the screams and flames of another slaughter he hadn’t wanted but hadn’t stopped. That seemed to be his life lately: Picking a course of action but never quite following through on it. He was torn, always torn between the light and the dark, and no matter what he did, the other side always had just a little too much control over him. He was too dark for the light and too light for the dark, and he hated every second of it.

The Stormtrooper spotted him and scurried away, and Kylo tried to ignore the prick of relief. _I’ll watch him,_ he decided. _He has been loyal in the past, and he is young. Let Phasma deal with any failure she may discover._

Hux’s voice from the night of his promotion echoed in his mind. _I don’t know what Snoke sees in you. Your connection to the Force may be stronger than mine, but in your heart, you are_ weak _. And one day, I will make sure that is your downfall._

Kylo spun on his heel and marched back to the ship, clenching his fist.

\-----

Rey followed the distant, muffled screams of her younger self away from Finn and the crowds and down into an empty stone corridor, the only sounds her echoing footsteps and BB-8’s mechanical noises and uncertain beeps. A storeroom door slid open at her presence, and she instinctively knew which box to open. She approached with bated breath, wariness and curiosity battling within her as she lifted the lid.

“A lightsaber,” she breathed, her eyes going wide, a voice in the back of her mind marveling at how many portions it would have been worth. Like an awestruck child, she reached for the fabled weapon.

The moment her skin brushed against the metal, everything changed.

The stone vanished, replaced by the sprawling dunes of Jakku, and before her stood two very familiar people. “Mom,” she breathed. “Dad!”

They didn’t seem to see her. Dad gripped Mom’s shoulders, tears staining her cheeks. “I know,” she said, voice steady despite her tears. “We have to leave her. It’s for her protection.”

“I’m here,” Rey whispered, reaching out for them. “I’m right here.”

Her hand closed on empty air, the sand fading into the walls of the _Millennium Falcon_ , and before her stood Han, younger than he was now, his wrinkles faint and his hair mostly brown. “I’m taking him on this trip, Leia,” he told the woman in front of him. “You and Luke keeping looking at him like he’s gonna suddenly turn into Vader, and he knows it. He needs a break.”

“He has the potential for great darkness inside of him, Han,” Leia said. “He needs to be trained, to be protected.”

“That’s what I’m doing,” Han snapped. “I’m protecting him.”

Behind them, a boy peeked around the corner, watching them with distress in his eyes.

The ship jumped into light speed, yanking her off her feet as the walls passed right through her, plunging her into space. She screamed, flailing for something to hold, only to fall to the ground, the wind knocked out of her. Fire roared to life around her and she scrambled away, ending up on her stomach beside a droid and a man kneeling beside it, clutching it with a metal hand as he stared at the destruction, an anguished scream hovering in the air around him.

The world shifted again before she finished jumping to her feet and suddenly she was looking at herself strapped to a chair, a man she instinctively knew to be Kylo Ren kneeling before her. He took off his helmet, exposing a face that looked… human. Young. Rey blinked, trying to match it with the image of the hideous angry tyrant she had always imagined.

_The boy,_ she realized, recognizing the dark hair, the dark eyes in a flash of understanding. _Kylo Ren… is Han and Leia’s son._

Red walls rose around her, shoving the cell up into oblivion, and this time she saw the Han she knew, Ren in front of him, both men so close to her she couldn’t see anything else. Han caressed his cheek, the soft touch of a father, and he smiled, never looking away from Ren’s tear-filled eyes.

He collapsed, a saber wound clear in his chest.

“No!” Rey screamed.

Rocks rose around her, green grass beneath her feet, an ocean visible beneath gaps in the stone, Ren beside her. “You are a dyad in the Force,” a man was saying, and she recognized his voice as the one who had screamed at the fire. _Luke._ “Twins, in a way, descended from darkness and destined for greatness. I see that now.”

Then she was in a cave, looking at herself, again looking at Ren. They stood on equal footing now, sharing a nod, and in one synchronous movement, they began to lift their lightsabers.

Rey slammed her hand down on where the box’s lid had been, catching it and shutting it despite not being able to see it. The vision vanished and she staggered backwards, losing her balance and barely catching herself as she fell. She stared at the box, chest heaving, one thought racing around and around her mind:

_I’m going to join the dark side._

\-----

“You know, no matter how much we fought… I’ve always hated watching you leave.”

Han turned to Leia, spreading his hands in faux innocence as he walked over to her. “That’s why I did it: So you’d miss me.”

She smiled with a little huff of amusement. “I did miss you.”

The teasing faded a little, into something more somber, more bittersweet. “It wasn’t all bad, was it?” he asked, brushing a stray strand of hair off her temple. “Some of it was good.”

She leaned into the caress, catching his hand and holding on. “I chased you away,” she whispered. “I chased you both away.”

“No,” Han murmured, unable to bear the guilt in her voice, crushing the strength from her stance. He drew her close, savoring the feeling of her in his arms for the first time in far too long. “You were trying your best. We made our own decisions.”

Leia let out a sigh that carried the weight of a thousand arguments with their innocent child caught in the middle, leaning into his embrace. “My best was the wrong path. I pushed you both too far.”

Han bent down to kiss her hair, closing his eyes to remember a time long ago, when their love for each other and their newborn son seemed like a permanent force, a bond that would always hold them together. Instead, it had become the wedge that pushed them apart, bit by angry, agonizing bit. “There are so many times I’ve wished I’d never left,” he admitted quietly. “I wish I’d never left the first time, or the tenth time, or… or the last time.”

Leia lifted her head, resting her chin on his chest, and he shifted with her, looking down at the fierce, vulnerable princess he had fallen in love with. “I never blamed you for leaving. I just wish I’d been able to stop you. And myself.”

On impulse, Han kissed her. It was soft and intense all at once, a possible last goodbye, a broken apology, a desperate promise. She returned it with the same passion, every strained year bubbling to the surface before melting away at the touch.

“If you see our son,” she said as she eased away, “bring him home.”

“I will. I promise,” Han said, stepping slowly backwards, knowing he had to leave one last time. “Leia?”

“Han?”

“I love you.”

Leia smiled, the corner of her mouth lifting into half a smirk. “I know.”

\-----

“Ben!”

Han’s shout reverberated throughout the massive room, making the cloaked figure on the walkway freeze. It didn’t look like the sudden stop of an enemy caught in a vulnerable position. No, it looked more like the guilty freeze of a boy caught stealing from the cookie jar, and _god_ how Han wished that was all his son had done.

Lifting his chin and straightening his shoulders, Ben turned around. “Han Solo. I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time.”

_So have I, kid._

Taking a deep breath, Han moved down the walkway. His footsteps clanked against the grating, and somewhere behind him, a door opened to the howling wind outside, but none of the noise could drown out the thundering of his heart. There had to be Stormtroopers in here – he could feel the pressure of too many eyes watching his every move – but despite his exposed position, his blaster holstered, none fired. _They’re waiting for an order. For Ben’s order._

He stopped well out of reach of his son, his instincts screaming at him to do a billion different things. He wanted to keep walking, to get close enough to pull his boy into a hug, to chase away the darkness that had taken over him. He wanted to back away, to take this chance to run, to never have to find out if Ben would give the order to kill him. He wanted to stay put and take out his blaster, aim it at his wayward child, and force his ass home to be grounded for the rest of his life.

He did none of that. He stayed still. “Take off that mask,” he ordered. “You don’t need it.”

“What do you think you’ll see if I do?” Ben asked, his youthful voice distorted and hardened.

_The man who leads more of the First Order than anyone but Snoke. The boy who I taught to fly my ship, sitting in Chewie’s lap because he couldn’t reach the controls on his own. The man who kidnapped Rey. The boy with no idea what he had done wrong when his parents argued over the darkness Luke and Leia could sense in him, but who still tried his best to be good for them._

“The face of my son.”

A long moment passed, and then, slowly, with an air of dramatic flair, Ben removed the helmet, his dark hair cascading down to his shoulders. _He never did like haircuts,_ Han thought, a brief bout of fondness that Ben’s next words couldn’t quite chase away.

“Your son is gone,” he said. “He was weak and foolish, like his father. So I destroyed him.”

But as Han again moved closer, drawn forward by a love that no darkness could weaken, he knew that wasn’t true. Those were the same eyes that had looked up at him when Han held his newborn son for the first time. That was the same hair Han had ruffled to tease him. That was the forehead Han had kissed goodnight, those were the lips that had grinned every time Han came home with presents, that was the same face that Han had looked down to find fast asleep on his shoulder countless times. The features were older, shadowed by pain and anger, but they were the same.

“That’s what Snoke wants you to believe,” Han said. “But it’s not true. My son is _alive_.”

“No!” Ben moved in a blur, dropping his helmet, yanking his saber from its holster and thrusting it out, lighting up in a flare of red. Han didn’t flinch even when it stopped barely an inch from his face, didn’t raise his hands in surrender, didn’t reach for his blaster. He was only distantly aware of Rey and Finn screaming his name. “Your son is _dead_. Luke Skywalker made sure of that.”

He was huddled behind his saber, his head ducked and face half hidden behind his arm. He was trying to look threatening, but he just looked small, his eyes wild and desperate and _young_. “Then kill me,” Han challenged, pushing aside the mention of Luke as a boy blaming his actions on everybody else. “If Ben is dead and Kylo is all that remains, end this. Push me off the walkway. Cut off my head. Stab me through the heart. Just _end it_.”

Ben stared at him, his hand trembling. The silence dragged on, the tension palpable, crackling around them and ready to snap.

“My son is still here,” Han said softly, reaching out, wanting only to stroke his cheek, to hold close the boy he had lost, but he couldn’t bridge the gap just yet, so he left his hand out, palm up – an offering. “He’s just lost. Let me lead him home.”

Ben glanced at the proffered hand.

His saber started to move.

Blasterfire erupted from above.

The walkway started to twist beneath them, part of it melted by the shots, threatening to plunge them into the abyss below. Ben leapt into action, sheathing his saber and snatching his helmet before it could tip over the edge, smashing the rest of the walkway between them with a jerk of his hand. Han staggered backwards, and Ben raced in the opposite direction. “Ben!” Han shouted. “Ben, wait!”

Ben paused for the briefest of moments, looking back at Han, hand clenched around his mask.

Then he was gone. Vanished into the shadows.

“ _Ben_!”

To call him back now was hopeless, but the anguished word tore out of Han’s throat anyway.

\-----

Rey knew what was coming the moment they reached relative safety, but she was still glad of Finn hovering behind her when it did happen. “Why the hell did you shoot?” Han demanded, towering over her aboard the _Falcon_. “He was putting down the saber!”

She glared up at him, remembering every heart-stopping second of Han’s reckless attempt to talk Kylo into returning to a home he had abandoned long ago. She remembered looking for a way down but finding none, remembered flinching into Finn when Kylo drew his lightsaber, remembered seeing the saber move and acting on pure instinct, fueled by the vision Luke’s saber had shown her. The details hadn’t been right, but that hadn’t been a chance she was willing to take. “You don’t know that,” she snapped.

“I was a hell of a lot closer than you were, I think I know better than _you_ what _my son_ was about to do.”

Something reared up within her, an emotion she recognized as jealousy, and she couldn’t squash it down. It bled into her voice, coloring it red, blending with the last vestiges of her terror to make it rough with rage. “He’s not your son anymore! He’s Kylo Ren, second in evil only to Snoke. He was going to kill you!”

“You don’t know that,” Han shot back. “You don’t know anything about him.”

“I know that he kidnapped me,” she retorted fiercely. “He invaded my mind, and he felt no remorse about it.”

“He invaded Poe’s mind too,” Finn piped up.

“I know that the only thing he fears is not living up to Darth Vader,” Rey ranted on. “I don’t know the boy you raised, but the man he is now does not deserve to be saved.”

“You _don’t_ know him,” Han agreed harshly. “You weren’t down there. You were high up on your balcony where you couldn’t see a damn thing. You couldn’t see the _conflict_ in him. What gave you the right to decide he’s not worth saving?”

“Because he was about to kill the closest thing I’ve ever had to a father!”

The words burst from her before she could think better of saying it. She clapped a hand over her mouth, ears burning with embarrassment, and she braced for the response. Braced for the response that she wasn’t his daughter, that he had only ever had one child and he had been down on that walkway, and she had driven him away.

Han glanced between her and Finn, stunned into silence for a long moment. Ultimately, he lowered his head, closing his eyes, and his shoulders slumped with the breath he let out. “I made a promise,” he said quietly. “I guess I let that blind me to the other kids I have to protect.”

Slowly, in jerky movements, Rey lowered her hand. “Did- did you just- was that an apology?”

He lifted his head, reopening his eyes, and he again looked like the brash old man she had come to know. “Don’t get used to it,” he said, striding past her towards the cockpit, giving Finn a clap on the shoulder on the way.

Furrowing her brows, she turned after him. “R2-D2 woke up,” she reminded him. “Aren’t you coming to see the map?”

“You go check it out.” He sat down heavily, a gaze full of lost memories lingering over the co-pilot’s chair. “I told the woman I love that I would bring our son back to her. I’m not going home without him.”

Rey rested her hand on his shoulder, wishing that she didn’t understand, that she could forget the vision of him dying at his son’s hands. “Maybe be more careful about it in the future.”

Han looked up at her, offering some half-hearted version of a smirk as he laid his hand over hers. “War is war, kid. I make no promises.”

**Author's Note:**

> Got a comment? Drop it below or send an ask to my Tumblr, @xdawnofthestarsx!


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